We cannot imagine anyone entertaining a serious objection to the construction of a new animal shelter in Denton, but the report in Friday’s paper about the beginning of this worthwhile project also made us think about how we go about serving our fellow human beings.

The Record-Chronicle’s Lowell Brown reported that almost $200,000 has already been raised in gifts or pledges by the Denton Animal Shelter Foundation toward a goal of $3.2 million that will go toward the construction of a new animal shelter at Riney Road and North Elm Street. The city will pay the rest of the $7 million-to-$10 million construction cost, and will manage and maintain the new facility.

The new animal shelter will replace the outdated, overcrowded and depressing shelter on Woodrow Lane, where dedicated staff members have labored too long to care for a rising tide of abandoned animals, resulting in a depressingly high euthanasia rate.

Stray animals are a public health and safety problem, but they are also a test of our humanity. We could handle the health and safety issues with a strict extermination policy, but there is something in us, thank God, that will not allow us to do it. The vast majority of the animals who enter Denton’s animal shelter are domesticated, bred to be companions to humans who love them and care for them. That they have lost their caring masters — or never had them — is not their fault, and something in us rebels at the thought of treating these innocent animals as so much animate garbage.

The proposed shelter will be three times the size of the existing facility, and the emphasis there will be on adopting out the animals that come there, not on disposing of them. There will be “get-acquainted” rooms where individuals and families can play with prospective pets, and separate areas for healthy and sick animals.

The Denton Animal Shelter Foundation was formed specifically to raise funds for this new shelter. Its volunteer founders knew that private help would be needed to build the kind of shelter Denton needs. Their work will be even harder in the present economy, and the bleak economic picture is likely to have an effect on when the city can issue bonds that will pay for its share of the project.

But we have no doubt that the new shelter will be built. The plight of homeless animals is something that touches the best in just about all of us; it is something in which we can take a measurable feeling of satisfaction.

We wish that feeling could be unalloyed, but even as we felt the satisfaction of the foundation’s first efforts, we could not help but think of another segment of our homeless population, the men and women who for whatever reasons find themselves without a roof over their heads. We thought about our past efforts to minister to these homeless members of our society, and about how they have met with something less than success.

A local ministry tried a few years ago to create a permanent shelter for homeless persons in Denton and failed. That failure, we now think, was due to a combination of unfortunate circumstances: an initial lack of enthusiasm and cooperation on the part of the city and a resulting recalcitrance and blind stubbornness on the part of the well-meaning but inept sponsors of the shelter.

It is a good thing that the people of Denton can come together to help save the forgotten and homeless animals in our city; it is sad that we have been unable to do so for our human brothers and sisters.